Focus: HOPE Celebrates Kids: HOPE Summer Basketball Camp

This summer Focus: HOPE rolled out its Kids: HOPE programming.
Kids: HOPE provides opportunities for over one hundred youth to participate in academic engagement, career pathway exploration and supervised after-school and year-round programming that strengthens relations with parents, teachers, peers, and the community. And one of the summer program choices was basketball.

In collaboration with Detroit’s NBA star Derrick Coleman and his summer league program DC Elite; Kids: HOPE held its very first summer basketball camp. The turn-out from the community was more than expected nearly 150 children signed up to learn basketball fundamentals, health & wellness, and leadership skills from basketball experts like Coleman.

DC Elite was dedicated to mentoring and teaching the youth the importance of education. For instance, having the youth showcase maturity, while leading them down the path to success on and off the court. The camp’s success gained the attention of WDIV. The local news channel came out to see the camp in action.

The Director of Early Learning/Youth Development, Waymond Hayes says, “Not only are we educating the campers on basketball, strategy, and sportsmanship. It goes beyond that, and we are really trying to integrate a two-gen approach. Along with Focus: HOPE’s organizational mission into all of the community work we do. We’re out here teaching the children how to cultivate creativity and execute a vision. In other words, how to reach for their dreams, through thoughtful intention. We are teaching the kids where they can go from here while instilling values within them to ensure they never forget where they came from.”